Back in the City of Exiles

Well I have been back home in the motherland for a while now. Nearly three weeks actually. I arrived in Vladivostok on the twenty-seventh of August after nearly two days of flying in airplanes and sitting in airports for hours on end. On arrival I was greeted by my friend Sasha along with his friend with great excitement. The old chums were back again. It was good to see a familiar face in a different country. What Sasha noticed about me, aside from my beard and silly hat that I always wear, was that my bag was so small. Did I mention that Aeroflot Airlines lost my bag while I was in Moscow? So all I had was my carry-on, which only contained souvenirs for all my friends back in Chita!!! So as we walked nearly the entire day in Vladivostok, he showed me a place that I could buy some cheap clothes so that I would be able to change into some new clothes for the train. Back in Chita, my friend Yulia and my host dad Nickolai had already taken care of my train ticket. Surprisingly, even train tickets in Russia can be taken care of through the Internet. Sasha and I walked around the whole city until I was dead tired really; we had been to the harbor to watch all the sailors from around Vladivostok, Korea, Japan, and even some American sailors get off their ships in celebration for yet another Russian holiday. He and I met a couple of American Navy-men from Arkansas and Detroit, and they also turned out to be a couple of idiots in my point of view, but what else is their to do as a sailor in a foreign land but drink and find some ladies to get lucky with? Later at around ten Sasha and his friend took me to the train station with all of my stuff, after first taking me to a grocery store where I could stock up on Doshirak (ramen noodles). At the station, we said our small farewells, hugging and shaking hands without much concern. We knew that we would see each other again on my way back.

So now I am on the train late at night, in a small room with a sailor heading to Chita and some other woman as well. I had put all my things away and was ready for sleep in less than ten minutes. I have to thank Sasha for all that walking, because falling asleep was pretty easy that night. Once I woke up in the morning I noticed that someone else had joined us and was up in the top bunks with me. Some really big dude who snores well.

To say the least nothing really interesting happened on the train while traveling to Chita. I did however make good friends with the sailor named Max, and even befriended him on vkontake, I drank a few Stella Artois beers with one of the guys that joined us on our merry adventure. But the most interesting thing that happened was while I was walking outside with Max to get some fresh air at the station stop. While we went to a small kiosk there were people crowded around all trying to get some fresh goods for there long ride, and the amount of Russian surrounding me was unsurprising. What was surprising was the small amount of English I heard with an American accent. I turned around to see a man asking questions in English to another Russian and saying small Russian words like пиво (beer) and большой (big) with an accent that I recognized far too well. So what do I do, approach the obvious foreigner and ask him where he's from. Boston Rob. Not the one from Survivor, but just as cool. We got along just well and we exchanged information, and he told me the cart he was, which happened to be in First Class. Later we met up in the restaurant and he bought me a beer and my lunch. It's nice to have comfort that you can assure yourself is actual comfort.

On the early night of the twenty-eight, I arrived in Chita with a new friend in the Navy, and a great eagerness. I looked around at the station for my friends and saw them coming right towards me. However as they were approaching me, they were still looking around for someone. I had realized that they thought I was someone completely different because of the beard they had never seen on my face. So when they finally realized who I was, Leausha, Glaya, Katya, and Oleg all screamed with excitement!!!..... Galya with probably the most. The exchanging of hugs and kisses came and the questions flew. And as we walked down the station walkway together with all of us filled to the brim with excitement that I had truly come back to Chita; I saw my host brother Leusha (or Alexey, and yes there are lots of Alexeys in Russia) walking towards me alone. He saw me and ran at me to hug me, and I obliged him. Then he told me, "why the fuck didn't you call me?!?!?!" with a smile on his face. We laughed. After walking around the station in the late night, my brother got a taxi and went back to the apartment, and I looked out the window and realized that pretty much everything I knew about Chita had stayed the same. I was back.

Almost There

Well I have nearly made it back. All I am waiting for is my Russian visa to come through, and to pay for my flight tickets, and to rake in the last bits of cash I can before leaving back to the motherland for a month. Some of the ideas I had to make money were kinda ridiculous, but some of them were ones I was nearly considering doing due to my desperation: playing guitar in Portland, selling books, selling my guitars, selling anything. Luckily, held back on most of those.

A month seems so small in comparison to the year I spent there, but I'll have to be satisfied with the fact that I am returning back to Russia, and that I'll be returning in the summertime. Seriously, not one day has gone by where I haven't thought about Russia and the return back. It's been a year and ten days since I arrived back home in the evergreen state of Washington, but my memories have kept me placed in the small city in Siberia in the Zabaikalski Krai. Nothing has changed really, except for a bit of my Russian, and my face. I wonder what my host parents will think of me when they see my beard?... I wonder what Yulia will think of my beard? I wonder what kinds of changes all my friends will see in me since I left?

I can't wait to see Leusha and Katya get married, it has been the main reason to go to Russia this entire year I have planned to return. This will be my first Russian wedding that I will take part in, and from what I have heard about all the weddings in Russia, they are sure to be a blast. Just imagine all the opportunities for the American groomsman at a Russian wedding, especially when considering all the bridesmaids that will be there. :) Suites, dresses, honking cars and ribbons, men, women, boys and girls, and lots of champagne and vodka to go around. What a wonderful party to be at!

Still, going back to Chita will be great; but it will feel different without the other American to be by my side in my adventures. Half of the things I did there were with Michelle, and now it seems like I'll go back half full. But I guess that means it will give me the opportunity to see things out on my own again like I did before. And if you are reading this Michelle I hope that you are doing well and having a blast at whatever you are doing, and that I miss you very much.

Hopefully everything will go according to plan, and that everything will turn out alright and I'll be enjoying myself on a train to Chita in the next couple of weeks. Россия, я жду тебя.

*Note: Did I mention that I will be one of the three siblings out of five that will be in a foreign country all at the same time? (Me in Russia, Ashley and Kenny in Europe, Erica in Italy).

Almost Another Year

It has been nearly a year since I left Russia. In one month twenty-four days I will have departed on the Trans-Siberian from the city I grew to love so dear to me. In one month twenty-seven days I will have gotten onto a plane and flown to the United States. Funny how the time has already gone so far past me. I have already turned nineteen and my class is graduating and moving on with their lives, where they will most likely go off to college or a university to pursue a better education to work towards a career. I still am stuck behind them all, on my own behalf, and will not graduate with them. Not only am I stuck in school, I am stuck in Russia.

Everyday is still awakened with a thought of my past year in the old country. Every conversation I have with my dear friends eventually winds onto a road of my experiences in the cold Siberia I love. The smallest things trigger a chain reaction of thoughts and memories that constantly flow through my mind as if it were the blood in my head. Random notes and papers are left around my house with the cursive Russian words and sayings I learned to speak and write, bled into the notes in various inks. Some of them meaningful, some just words. Sometimes they're sad, mostly they're funny. I constantly look around at Clark College and see the faces of random people, but I also see faces that I remember in Chita.

Though I still think everyday about the good times spent there, I have forgotten some of my Russian; since I never practice with anyone but myself and the rare phone call to a friend or family member in Russia. I'll have a conversation with myself in my own understanding of the language and realize my vocabulary is smaller than what it used to be. I'll hear or read something on the internet in Russian and hear a word that I know I know, but can't place a finger on how I know it, or when I use it. Regardless, I still breathe, eat, sleep, speak, and think Russia. Her white is my skin, her blue are the jeans I wear, and her red is my blood...

I am stuck in Russia. My friend Miranda was right about the toll it is taking on my social life, and my personal life as well. My exchange has given me so many things that I have utilized in my daily life back home, but in that aspect it has also created an obsession that I'll never let slip from my mind. What's worse is that I am already an obsessive person. Anybody who knows me could agree with me on this characteristic. Some might say it is just persistency, but it's just another word really. The fact that still remains is that I am lost in the sea of my fixation for Russia, and I am drowning in it.

With all this time that passes by, I wonder if every one of my friends who travelled with me feels the same way that I feel. I know we all miss it dearly, but I wonder if they are as crazy as I am about it. They are all moving on with their lives and finding great things along the way to cherish their memories, and they seem to be content with it, in my perspective (which is unreliable). And as the time goes by we all seem to forget the little things and traditions we used to all do. I remember when we used to say that we loved each other, and we would say it so often as the time came closer to leaving. The months after went by and we all still were reminded of it. But now it seems that has all changed, and I don't know why. I would still like to remind them all that I love them dearly, because I still do. But doing that would be awkward and disrupt us from the nature of our current lives. I'd like to say that I am the only that feels this way. I'd like to say that all of us feel this way. But I can't even be sure of both anymore.

Things have changed, and they are still changing between all of us. I can't expect things to be like they used to because that would be ridiculous and only a dream. I still picture that house I talked about with Michelle once, with all of us put in it living together and being a family of friends. Since things are changing, no one wants that life but me, and this image will never come true in my world. I am fine with that, because it is quite childish for me to dream about that. Reading those words again is ludicrous itself. Though I wish that life was one that could become a reality. One's thing is for sure: life will go on and things will get better because they always do, but they rarely ever happen the way any of us say they will.

Still, it would be beautiful.

Chita

Wrapped in winter's freezing hands
She brings warmth in her glory
Her life lingers slowly here
In the tundra below forty

The hills of birch surround
As the moon covers her soft
The snow falls into place
Laying down to make her loft

She lays there in the forest
The forest of everlasting old
The wind beats fiercely
It's voice whispers cold

Her shadows stretch into night
Covering all in a robe of darkness
While approaching the morning dawn
She casts out the shadows' heartless

Then spring raides her lands
The sun shines down so bright
The snow dispears from around her
And brings her into a world of light

Now she dances with life
Summer's beauty is in her
But beauty only lasts so long
She'll dance until winter.